Creating a user registration/authentication/leaderboard

MeltdownZA

I can't seem to find anything related to this.. but how does one go about creating a user/leaderboard system?

For instance, for people to play online, I want them to register say an email, username and password.
Then each time they connect to Photon it allows them access to the server, and thus all stats etc are recorded against their username.

Is this something that can be integrated into Photon or is it something I should host myself?

Thanks

dreamora

You can integrate it, host it as part of a webservice to use it for a webpage too and whatever you want.
Its all up to you.

Tobias

Dreamora is right: Photon nicely works with existing systems, as you can pass-in username, etc and do registration somewhere else. You can also do this in Unity and add the required operations for it (unless you use the Photon Cloud, which can't be customized).

MeltdownZA

We are looking to have our next title released on Steam. In order to integrate with Steam users, would we need our own servers, or would we in any way be able to integrate with the cloud?

Tobias

The cloud is a black box and can't be adjusted to your game logic. It's used to pass data between players but essentially everything game-related is done client side.
If that fits into your plans, you could use the Cloud Service for sure.

If you want to implement custom logic in the server, you could use our server SDK, the LoadBalancing Solution as base for your logic and host Photon servers yourself.

MeltdownZA

So what you are saying, is if I could get a player's Steam username in my client, I could do all the authentication client side, then forward them to the Photon cloud from my client when all is good. Once an event happens in my game, say a player wins a race, I can call my custom service hosted seperately to record the stats, then perhaps call Steamworks seperately from my client to record the stats there too?

Tobias

Yes, that's one way to do it explicitly outside the server. Sounds a bit complicated but as long as you don't host the server yourself, you can't put that in there.